My first real love was alcohol, but what started as an impassioned fling to help me cope quickly spiraled into a nightmare that dominated my life.
The single worst moment in my entire life happened to me in a movie theatre. It was 2009, I was 11 years old, watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I had been looking forward to it for months, as I’ve always been a fan of the franchise.
But something different happened during that movie. As I sat staring at the silver screen illuminated by the faces of my idols Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, I made a realization that would come to ruin me. It started innocently with Draco bolting into a blue-lit bathroom to contemplate all the atrocities he’d been committing during the film. I watched as he stared into the mirror. I remember I couldn’t stop looking. I was completely enamored with how his skin looked and the way the blue tinge of the screen made his eyes glow. As the movie went on, that scene stayed with me—no, it didn’t stay with me. It haunted me.
I was silent the whole way home. When my parents asked if I liked the movie I’d been counting the days to see, I said it was fine. I got home and pretended to sleep, but of course I didn’t. Instead I laid in bed unmoving, trying to keep the tears from rolling out of my tightly closed eyes.
I was broken. I was broken because I’d realized I thought Draco Malfoy was beautiful. I realized I thought men were beautiful.
I didn’t speak about it to anyone. The first thing I was ever told about gay people was that they were disgusting. It was an overly-flamboyant man on American Idol that had led my father to go on a tirade about “fags” on TV being a sign that we’ve failed as a society. Until then, I didn’t even know gay people existed, and here I was three years later experiencing those feelings I’d been told people should be lynched for. I couldn’t get it out of my head, but at least it could sit dormant for a while.
The real problem started when I was 13. Puberty is a bitch, but it’s even worse when it induces a panic attack every time you look at the baseball team. I was starting to have the feelings I told myself were a fluke again. I prayed every day that this was just me misinterpreting my emotions, but it was suddenly real: I was gay, and I couldn’t escape it. It consumed my every waking moment; my thoughts flooded with fear that people could tell. What would my dad do when the son he already hated was gay? He’d shoot me. No, he wouldn’t let it be that easy. He’d literally beat me to death. I needed an escape. I had to do something to make the storm in my mind dissipate long enough to feel just a moment of peace.
That’s what led me to the love of my life. The one man I fully embraced loving was Jim Beam.
It was so easy. Down a few shots of vodka, and my mind was clear. A flask of whiskey a day kept the gay away. I couldn’t have been happier because all I had to do was raid my dad’s secret liquor stash, and suddenly I was on Cloud Nine.
You can’t have gay thoughts when you’re too drunk to think.
My love of men had warped into a love of alcohol. Sure, I knew being drunk every day at age 13 was weird, but it had to be way less weird than being gay, right? It was incredibly easy for me to get alcohol, as well. I mean, I’d like to say someone cared, but I had no friends to notice what was happening, and my parents weren’t exactly attentive. My father was also an alcoholic who didn’t keep good track of his liquor, so I could drink as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted.
For about three years, the drinking worked. But as I grew, so did my tolerance for alcohol. By 16, I was starting every morning with four shots of whiskey, then pouring whatever was available into my flask and heading to school. When I got home, I’d pound back three or four beers and usually finish the night with a few shots of my soulmate—Skol Vodka. Eventually, I could barely keep a buzz anymore, let alone stay drunk enough to hide from myself. Unbidden, the emotions I’d run from for so long began creeping back into my life, and now my only escape was gone. I was at my wit’s end.
I began contemplating suicide for the second time in my life. My love affair with liquor had revealed itself to be an abusive relationship, controlling my every action. No longer did it offer me solace, only pain, yet every morning I still greeted it with open arms.
I’d developed Stockholm syndrome. I focused on all the good alcohol had done for me, telling myself I had to stay with it in hopes that the love would come back. It never did. I was left a shell of a man. Here I was, 16 and completely alone, beaten down, going through daily withdrawals, and worst of all in my mind—gay.
I wish I could say there was some grand resolution where I tearfully accepted myself, but that wasn’t the case. There were a lot of years trapped in this constant sprint of running from myself and chasing the escape of drinking. But eventually I just stopped running. I let the euphoria of drunkenness outrun me and the reality of who I was catch up.
The only way this happened was to fall out of love with Skol and in love with people. At first with friends, then with therapists, and even with my mom after some reconciliation. It was a new kind of love. A platonic one based on mutual respect and admiration that I’d never felt before. It was something hard for me to grasp, and it took a lot of trial and error to not fall back into the habits of the past. But the love I felt from people instead of a drink was the single most important thing I’d ever felt.
That strange warm feeling I hadn’t really felt since my first taste of whiskey is what eventually allowed me to learn to love myself. Knowing all these fantastic people cared enough to worry about me made me start to see myself differently. I didn’t need to hide anymore. I could be genuine. I could be happy. I could be someone I loved.
